Web Accessibility Tools - Part 1
Sorted by Release Date
CC for Flash component The Carl and Ruth Shapiro Family National Center for Accessible Media at WGBH, 21 June 2007
Description: The CC for Flash component is a free tool that developers can add to their Flash projects to provide the display of searchable, multi-language captions that are synchronized to Flash video, animation, or sound objects. The component works in the following authoring environments: Flash MX 2004, Flash 8, and Flash CS3 (ActionScript 2.0 projects only).
- Language: English
- Repair options: Captioning
- Authoring tool: Flash MX
- Runtime: Flash
- License: Free Software
ccMP3Player The Carl and Ruth Shapiro Family National Center for Accessible Media at WGBH, 21 June 2007
Description: ccMP3Player is a free Flash-based MP3 player that can be embedded in Web pages to play back MP3 audio files along with their corresponding captions. External caption files can be formatted in either DFXP or QTtext. Accessibility features have been built in for screen-reader users and those requiring keyboard access. ccMP3Player is viewable in browsers containing the Flash Player 8 (or higher) plug-in.
- Language: English
- Repair options: Captioning
- Browser: Internet Explorer, Mozilla/Firefox, Safari
- License: Free Software
ccPlayer The Carl and Ruth Shapiro Family National Center for Accessible Media at WGBH, 21 June 2007
Description: ccPlayer is a free Flash video player that can be embedded in Web pages in order to display Flash video along with its corresponding captions. Captions can either be embedded in the video or contained in external DFXP- or QTtext-formatted files. ccPlayer also allows viewers to change to other caption languages that may be available in DFXP caption files. Accessibility features have been [built in] for [screen-reader] users and those requiring keyboard access. ccPlayer is viewable in browsers containing the Flash Player 8 (or higher) plug-in.
- Language: English
- Repair options: Captioning
- Browser: Internet Explorer, Mozilla/Firefox, Safari
- License: Free Software
Media Access Generator (MAGpie) The Carl and Ruth Shapiro Family National Center for Accessible Media at WGBH, 21 June 2007
Description: MAGpie is a free JAVA-based application for creating captions and audio descriptions for QuickTime, Real, Flash (DFXP-format), and Windows Media content. MAGpie is available for use on both the Windows and Mac OS X platforms.
- Language: English
- Repair options: Captioning
- Operating system: Windows, MacOS
- Runtime: Java
- License: Free Software
com tab Pierre Frederiksen, 5 June 2007
Description: The toolbar is an add-on to FireFox and can be used to: reveal "headers" and "id" complex data table mark-up; create such mark-up either manually or automatically; and create a linear version of the data table content. Complex data table mark-up is needed for screen reader users in order to make sense of a complex data table. Screen readers support (in varying degree) complex mark-up.
- Language: English
- Assistance: Step-by-step evaluations, In-page feedback, Page transformation
- Repair options: Code modification
- Formats: HTML, XHTML
- Browser: Mozilla/Firefox
- Reports: HTML
- License: Free Software
Colour Contrast Analyser WAT-C, 15 May 2007
Description: It is primarily a tool for checking foreground & background colour combinations to determine if they provide good colour visibility. It also contains functionality to create simulations of certain visual conditions such as colour blindness.
- Language: English, French, Italian
- Assistance: Generating Reports
- Formats: CSS, HTML, XHTML, PDF, Images, SMIL, SVG
- Operating system: Windows
- Reports: Text
- License: Free Software
IBM Rule-based Accessibility Validation Environment (RAVEn) IBM, 28 February 2007
Description: The IBM Rule-Based Accessibility Validation Environment (RAVEN) is an innovative suite of tools for inspecting Java and web rich-client graphical user interfaces (GUIs) and validating them for accessibility. Non-invasive techniques, like Aspect Oriented Programming (AOP), Introspection, and the Java Reflection API, are used to validate pre-existing GUIs at execution time rather than by examining source-code. This tool provides the ability to: Validate your static web content and some DHTML content for accessibility; Inspect and validate your Eclipse plug-in in the current Eclipse workbench; Inspect and validate your plug-in (and/or Eclipse itself) in an Eclipse workbench running in a separate JVM; Inspect and validate your Java application running in a separate JVM; Validate GUI components under development from the Java Perspective; Launch, test, and use RAVEN to validate Eclipse plug-ins from your development environment using the Runtime Workbench ; Define your own validation rules via external XML files; Persist validation reports.
- Language: English
- Assistance: Generating Reports, Step-by-step evaluations
- Automatic checking: Single pages
- Formats: HTML, XHTML
- Operating system: Windows
- IDE: Eclipse
- License: Free Software
Web Accessibility Toolbar [For Opera] Web Accessibility Tools Consortium, 15 December 2006
Description: The Web Accessibility Toolbar has been developed to aid manual examination of web pages for a variety of aspects of accessibility. It consists of a range of functions that: 1.identify components of a web page; 2.facilitate the use of 3rd party online applications; 3.provide links to references and additional resources.
- Language: English
- Guidelines: WCAG 1.0, Section 508
- Assistance: Generating Reports, In-page feedback, Page transformation
- Automatic checking: Single pages
- Formats: CSS, HTML, XHTML
- Browser: Opera
- Reports: HTML
- License: Free Software, Open Source
ColorDoctor Fujitsu Limited, 1 December 2006
Description: ColorDoctor is a simulating program that checks accessibility from the aspect of color. It converts any images displayed on the screen such as websites including Web 2.0, and other presentation contents, into gray scale or colors that person who has color blindness perceives. This software was renewed in December, 2006, and became to be usable.
- Language: English, Japanese
- Guidelines: WCAG 1.0, Section 508, JIS
- Operating system: Windows
- Runtime: .NET
- License: Free Software
ColorSelector Fujitsu Limited, 1 December 2006
Description: ColorSelector is a program that provides a real-time evaluation of whether or not the colors of a website's texts and backgrounds are easily viewable by people with cataracts or color blindness. At the time of developing a website including Web 2.0, and other presentation contents, ColorSelector determines whether the selected color combinations of text and background are easily readable, and further it displays the most appropriate combination. In this manner, it assists in the creation of visual contents with a high level of accessibility. This software was renewed in December, 2006, and became to be usable.
- Language: Chinese (Simplified), English, Japanese, Korean
- Guidelines: WCAG 1.0, Section 508, JIS
- Operating system: Windows, MacOS
- Runtime: Java
- License: Free Software
Web Accessibility Inspector Fujitsu Limited, 1 December 2006
Description: Web Accessibility Inspector is a program that can determine whether or not your website can be easily viewed by the elderly and those with visual impairments. The criteria of Web Accessibility Inspector are based on W3C WCAG 1.0 and Fujitsu Web Accessibility Guidelines. It can evaluate not just HTML but also CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), and enables to diagnose at a high level of precision, including text size, line spacing, and the color of texts and backgrounds. The software was renewed in December, 2006, and more advanced check items were added. The name of a Japanese version is WebInspector.
- Language: Chinese (Simplified), English, Japanese, Korean
- Guidelines: WCAG 1.0, Section 508, JIS
- Assistance: Generating Reports
- Automatic checking: Single pages, Page groups
- Formats: CSS, HTML, XHTML
- Operating system: Windows, MacOS
- Runtime: Java
- Reports: HTML
- License: Free Software
Acc - an Accessibility Evaluator , 24 August 2006
Description: Acc - an Accessibility Evaluator is a developing Firefox Extension, which is capable of evaluating and reporting some accessibility criteria. Acc - an Accessibility Evaluator can spot some basic explicit HTML-coding flaws like other tools, but it includes features like: Visual layout extraction implementation; Basic scalability test; Deeply nested layout tables test; Skip to Main Content link check; Navigation consistency check compared to previous page; and Scripted page evaluation.
- Language: English
- Assistance: Generating Reports, In-page feedback
- Automatic checking: Single pages
- Formats: CSS, HTML, XHTML
- Browser: Mozilla/Firefox
- Reports: HTML
- License: Free Software
Silvinha - Accessibility Validator and Repair Tool Acessibilidade Brasil, 17 August 2006
Description: The Silvinha software is a powerful multiplatform tool that checks accessibility of your HTML/XHTML pages using the W3C-WAI (WCAG) and e-GOV (Brazilian government accessibility rules for web) conformance. It can be installed inside any corporation network and able to perform full web server scan (any pages, groups of pages, full domains and tree level access) indicating errors that must be corrected and warnings which should be avoided. It also offers the fix and repair tool option (automatic and manual when the interference of the user is needed, ex. image alternative text) for all evaluated pages. Silvinha provides web updates (the user must have an internet connection) and full support during the period of one year, which can be extended for all our customers. We are upgrading the Silvinha tool to validate not only WCAG1 but as soon as possible, the next release of WCAG2(2006).
- Language: Brazilian Portuguese, English, French
- Guidelines: WCAG 1.0
- Assistance: Generating Reports, Step-by-step evaluations, In-page feedback, Page transformation
- Automatic checking: Single pages, Page groups, Restricted pages
- Repair options: Code modification
- Formats: HTML, XHTML
- Operating system: Windows, MacOS, Linux, Solaris, BSD Unix
- Runtime: Java
- License: Commercial
